Surrogacy Special story, instalment 1

Multiple Embryos, Double the Surrogates

Georgios* is Greek and lives in London with his Ukrainian partner Alexander* and their two-year-old twins who were born in the Ukraine.

In our Surrogacy Supplement Georgios shares their incredible international surrogacy journey: multiple pregnancies in two surrogates; crossing borders with the babies & a friend posing as mother; near-endless red tape to get into the UK; moral dilemmas and more.

The story so far: Georgios has decided to start a family through surrogacy, whilst living and working in Ukraine…

Sadly the first three IVF attempts failed, with two ending in early miscarriages. The process was emotionally draining.

Georgios had an idea: “The clinic were inserting six embryos at a time. I said, ‘why don’t we have two surrogates: use the same sperm and donor eggs but instead of inserting all the eggs in one carrier, insert them in two carriers?’ So we increase the probability of a successful pregnancy.”

The clinic had two issues. “First there would be an additional cost for the second surrogate. I said ‘fine’. The second was ‘what if both develop?’ I said ‘I’m happy to keep both of them because I’m not God.’”

The clinic proceeded with IVF using two surrogates, but instead of splitting the embryos and putting three in each woman, they put six embryos in each woman. “My God, it was scary,” Georgios recalls.

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What would you do? Have you had a similar experience? Got any advice, questions or thoughts? Please leave a comment below. It’s simple and you can be anonymous (all comments will be moderated)

Watch out for the next instalment: A Difficult Choice: Reducing Embryos, plus Getting a Passport – we’ll announce it on Twitter & Facebook